The World Cup is bigger than FIFA

Some people inherit their eye color or their hair color from their father. I like to think that along with all of those things, I also inherited a love for the beautiful game—football, or soccer as some people may call it.

My dad has been a fan for as long as I've been alive. He was born and raised in Thailand, where football is a part of the culture, like in many parts of Asia. He has a knowledge of the sport that’s almost encyclopedic. Most weekends when I was growing up, if my dad wasn’t at work, our living room TV was tuned into whatever match was happening across the pond. Premier League games kick off pretty early in England and I have many memories of my dad awake at 5 or 6 a.m. by himself in the blue light of the TV in our house in suburban Ohio. By the time my mom, my sister, and I would wake up, he would have already ridden three rollercoasters with his team of 11 English men five time zones ahead. Many people ask me when I became a football fan, like there's a date I could attach to it. But it was never something I had to think twice about. The matches were always on and every four years when the FIFA World Cup would come along, it would be on TV like clockwork. I like to believe that I became a fan the same way someone would pick up an accent.

So when we found out the most-watched sporting event in the world was coming to the United States, there wasn't really a discussion about whether we'd go, it was more about how we’d get there. My family entered the ticket lottery not really knowing what to expect, and round after round, we had resigned ourselves to it either not happening or having to pay an extravagant fee to be there. But serendipitously, an email came through, and it turned out the match we'd gotten tickets for landed on Father's Day. My dad, sister, brother-in-law, and I ended up at Atlanta Stadium to watch Spain play Saudi Arabia.

The match itself wasn't close. Lamine Yamal, the 18-year-old Spanish rising star, scored the first goal within 10 minutes, his first World Cup goal ever. The entire stadium erupted into cheers, knowing they were watching history in the making. Spain ended up adding two more goals before the first half ended and they finished the game 4-0 (and they're now set to play in the final game against Argentina for the cup on Sunday). But what's stayed with me more than the score is that the Saudi Arabian fans, spread out in paint splatters over sections across the stadium, never stopped singing for their team. Even when they were down four goals, in a venue that was almost entirely red for Spain, pockets of green kept the chants going like the match may have still been theirs to win—a collective effervescence that cannot be replicated anywhere else other than in a game where the underdogs are given a chance to shine along with the superstars on a world stage.

Regardless of the way the game plays out on the pitch, the running force behind it all, FIFA, is a historically corrupt organization and no amount of goodwill generated by this tournament changes that. In the past, executives have been hauled out of hotels in handcuffs in the middle of the night, countries’ hosting bids have been bought and sold with bribes, and in this World Cup, the sitting U.S. president called FIFA's president directly to lobby for a red card suspension to be overturned for an American player. It resulted in FIFA reversing the decision, drawing outrage from federations and fans across the world. None of that corruption is new. It's just newly visible, playing out in real time in front of the biggest audience the sport has ever had.

Somehow, despite the people running it, this particular World Cup is doing something for how the rest of the world sees the United States that not even a top PR agency could have engineered on purpose, slowly rehabilitating the country’s reputation in some ways. Many visitors are discovering that the version of the United States they were warned about, though it is very real and very horrific at times, isn't the only version that exists. The people are friendlier and the food is better. Early in the tournament, a Swedish fan discovered ranch dressing at a diner in Indiana and declared that Europe needed to get on the ranch train. A Japanese fan sat down with a stranger in Texas to try soul food for the first time and barely spoke through an entire plate of fried chicken and collard greens. Atlanta got its own share of pleasant discoveries. Visitors praised the city's public transit, calling the MARTA system comparable to some in Europe. It might seem small and unglamorous, but it’s the parts that people will remember. 

Atlanta wasn't a random draw for us either, it’s my brother-in-law's hometown. By now, he’s spent years nodding along to discussions and explanations at the dinner table about lineups  and standings, but he actually grew up watching baseball with his own family, a completely different sport with a completely different pacing and rhythm. So in June, when he was standing in his own city, in a stadium he's probably driven past hundreds of times, watching his new family members lose their minds over a goal scored by a Spanish teenager in braces, it felt like watching a new version of that same inheritance happening in real time, years later. 

Sometimes the same absorption happens through a tiny screen. Younger generations are watching the stars of tomorrow be born. TikTok doomscrollers know Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham intimately from clips of their friendly moments before they met as rivals for the quarterfinal decider between Norway and England. Yamal's little brother has gone viral in clips posted online by his family to the point where the toddler is now as recognizable as his superstar brother. Lionel Messi's greatest goals over his illustrious 22-year career have been collected and posted to a new wave of fans who weren't alive yet to see them happen in real time. It's a strange and sideways kind of inheritance compared to mine that was driven by an algorithm instead of through proximity, but I don't think it's a lesser one. It’s the same love for the moments, the athletes, and the game finding a new pathway into people’s lives. 

I think back to my dad when I consider all of this at once—a teenager in Bangkok who fell for a game the same accidental way a lot of us did. He just happened to carry it across an ocean and passed it on to his kids without ever really having to sit down and do it intentionally. Whatever this is, it’s never really taught but feels a bit more like something that gets caught. My brother-in-law caught it standing in his own hometown on that Sunday. A kid in a small town somewhere is catching it right now stumbling across a video of a goal on Reels. Maybe someone caught the stadium full of strangers whose team was four goals down but they still decided to keep singing anyway. I doubt any of us could tell you the exact moment it happened, but we’re glad it did.